This invention relates to a data printing system, and more particularly to a data printing system and related method of printing data on different type forms.
In FIG. 1, a conventional data printing system employs a plotter device 11 as a printing device. A control part 12 functions as a data management device. It stores various types of data that are keyed in from a keyboard 13 to the control part 12. Such data may be, for example, sale amount data for one day for each of various sale articles. These sale amount data are arranged to be displayed on a display 14.
In such a system, we may first of all explain the case where the sale amounts for one day are plotted on respective record forms over, for example, one week, changing the record form for each sale article. The sequence of sale amount data of each sale article sent from the control part 12 is set beforehand for example as sale articles A, B, C, . . . . Consequently, the sequence of record forms accommodated in a tray 15 is made to correspond to the order of output of sale data before the plot operation. Thus, the tray 15 holding record forms arranged in an order matching this sequence is loaded, then a print request is keyed in from the keyboard 10. Thereupon, the control part 12 sends the sale data to the plotter device 11, in the sequence: the sale article A, the sale article B, the sale article C . . . . First of all, in the plotter device 11, one record form is taken out of the tray 15 and set in a prescribed position 16. After that, the record form is sent to a form receptacle 17 after the sale data of the sale article A is plotted. Next, one record form is again taken out from the tray 15, and set in the prescribed position 16, the sale data is plotted, and the form is sent to the form receptacle 17. In this way, the sale data of the sale articles A, B, C, . . . is plotted on respective record forms.
However, in the above-described system, the sequence of the sale data sent from the control part 12 is preset, so, when the sale data is plotted, the record forms and the data output are in the same sequence. Therefore, with the increase in the number of record forms, the task of making these sequences match becomes troublesome.